Chapter 301: Broken Trust
As infuriating as her arrival was, Lumin’s takeover of Kir’s duties became a welcome opportunity for him to carry out even bigger strikes against the Syndicate. By the end of the week, he’d burned down a half dozen plantations, careful to let the slaves know in advance so they could get their people out.
Lumin’s friend Quilliam did his work out of Kir’s sight, arranging passage for escaped slaves to Norneau, mostly overland along the lake shore, and Kir left him to it. The problem remained, however, that the Syndicate would remain in Amrita as long as they had gold in the city. And he’d promised Lumin that gold in exchange for her cooperation, long before her "friends" came into the picture.
And to that end, he had Stella do him the favor of a little reconnaissance, which served as an acceptable apology for her cavalier attitude towards experimentation on people. She found out from a customer of the Consigliere Trust that the building was as hardened as it seemed and even more secure on the inside. It was reputable to the point that just to get a bank account, one needed a recommendation or an opening deposit equal to ten orichalc, and each customer received exactly one "blood key" that specially trained clerks had to handle in order to access deposits.
It was, from what Kir could piece together, technically the most advanced homegrown banking apparatus on the continent, and it was modeled after how Heaven used gold and credit to manipulate the finances of entire nations. But none of that mattered because the most important thing he learned was that the floor was just as physically and magically reinforced as the roof and walls; the entire building being one big, fireproof steel box with no basement. And one that eschewed the city’s normal wooden architecture in favor of polished marble and ceramics.
Thanks to Stella he finally had a plan that he felt confident enough to pull off, though it would involve a rather literal application of the notion of "liquid" assets.
On the night it was to happen, Kir put his plan into motion close to midnight.
He made sure his spare dimensional suitcase was on hand as he approached the structure, which was surrounded on all sides by a wrought iron fence with guards on each corner. A short way up the street, the lights of Heaven’s Embassy were still on, but the building was still rather dim.
Avoiding interference from them was first and foremost in Kir’s mind.
For the first part of his plan, Kir set up shop with the Trust completely occluding any view from the Embassy. Then he got to work.
One well-known principle of physics was that heat was present in all things. Anything that existed bore some form of heat, and even in the depths of winter, the coldest ice was far, far warmer than the lowest possible point. But it wasn’t the cold Kir was planning on using... yet.
Having had a little time to study the outside shielding, Kir noticed several things. One was that while the building was more than proofed enough against fire, it was not proofed against excessive heat. People had to work there after all, and so people needed liveable conditions.